Prosecutors of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse trial could wrap up their case by Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, they press on with testimony from his allege victims is both graphic and disturbing.
This morning, a man whose 1998 shower encounter with Sandusky was investigated by authorities but resulted in no charges said he remained in contact with the former Penn State assistant football coach as recently as last summer.
The man, a 25-year-old identified by prosecutors as Victim 6, told jurors that Sandusky lathered up his back in a Penn State locker room shower, hugged him chest-to-chest then lifted him closer to a showerhead to rinse his hair.
The man said the shared shower happened after a brief workout at a campus gym — even though he hadn’t broken a sweat. His mother went to authorities when she saw her then-11-year-old son come home with wet hair, although the inquiry spawned by her report didn’t lead to any charges.
The man is the sixth accuser to testify at Sandusky’s sex abuse trial. The ex-coach faces 52 criminal counts involving alleged assaults of 10 boys over a 15-year span. He denies the charges, which brought disgrace to Penn State and led to the ouster of both the school’s president and Hall of Fame football coach Joe Paterno.
On cross-examination, the man testified that in recent years he and Sandusky exchanged text messages, sent notes for holidays and special occasions and met for lunch last summer. He also told the court that Sandusky and his wife, Dottie, had supported a mission trip he took to Mexico.
When asked why he had decided to testify against Sandusky, the witness said he had been approached by investigators and asked to think more about the 1998 encounter.
“As I started to go over it in my mind I quickly realized, my perception changed thinking about it as an adult as opposed to an 11-year-old,” he said. “That was inappropriate, what happened to me.”
